It's a sound that's grounded in the rootsy stomp of the band's Nashville headquarters, as well as the sunny influence of Johnson's childhood years in Florida where he grew up surfing and skateboarding until music became his life. Eagle Johnson & Clean Machine nod to both of those locations with their debut album, Tennessee Beach. Sometimes punchy, sometimes psychedelic, and always melodic, Tennessee Beach is the sound of a songwriter who has rebelled, traveled, sinned, and done time before coming out on the other side with renewed inspiration.

Eagle's path to Tennessee Beach was long and winding, involving a defiant streak during early adulthood that ultimately found him behind bars for a breaking-and-entering charge involving a Florida church, then in a hospital for mental evaluation. (It turns out the prosecuting judge was the grandson of the church's original founder.) In jail for three months, then a hospital patient for six months, Eagle was allowed to play guitar as a form of therapy. By the time he was released with a clean bill of health, he'd evolved into a genuine songwriter, using music as a way not only to make sense of his world, but to change it, too. Eagle says he found jailhouse religion and peace with God while he was locked up, and considers songwriting and performing a reverent experience for him now.

Drawn to blues and American folk music, Eagle headed to Memphis, where he began playing local shows — including an opening gig alongside Valerie June — and attracted the attention of blues artist Zeke Johnson. Zeke took Eagle under his wing, giving him the confidence to pursue a lifelong career as a songwriter while also serving as a partial inspiration for Eagle's new name: Eagle Johnson. After cutting his teeth on the Memphis circuit for a year, Eagle relocated once again, this time to Nashville. There, he rolled his influences into an expanded sound, playing a brand of redemptive rock & roll that nodded to iconic artists of the past while still pushing forward.

Recorded to analog tape in three days at East Nashville's Bomb Shelter studio with over-dubs at Johnson's home studio, Tennessee Beach marks his band, Clean Machine's full-length debut, offering up a batch of guitar-driven songs about loving, leaving, and living with intention. Eagle produced the album with his band, working alongside Billy Bennett (engineer of the Whigs' Give Em All a Big Fat Lip and also former Georgia Bulldogs/Carolina Panthers kicker).